Standard 5-gallon filled water bottles are heavy and awkward to handle manually. They weigh approximately 50 pounds apiece and are difficult to grasp. While it has long been recognized that it would be desirable to automate the loading of filled water bottles into racks, a practical and efficient fully-automatic product for this purpose has been unavailable in the marketplace.
An example of a current state-of-the-art bottle loader is the Crystal Rock Rail Loader. This is a semi-automatic machine. The unit requires presence of a full-time operator, who hand-actuates the nonautomated operations that the machine performs. The nonautomated operations include manhandling the bottle racks to a bottle-loading station, then into successive locations in registration with the bottle loader at the loading station, and then away from the loading station after the rack is filled. The requirement of a full-time operator adds considerably to the cost of loading bottles, and results in a much slower than optimal loading operation. It is believed that 1200 bottles per hour represents the maximum loading rate attained with state-of-the-art bottle loaders such as the Crystal Rock Rail Loader.
Although the foregoing difficulties have existed for a long time, to date no device known to the inventor has been provided that overcomes them. It is believed that no fully automatic, self-contained machine capable of lifting bottles rapidly and efficiently into metal racks has ever been disclosed. The objects of this invention include providing means for accomplishing the foregoing functions.